Independent minds

Alaska is holding its most important election for a generation

OUTSIDE, frost is forming. Alaska's vast mountains are reminders of infinity. But inside the suburban church, a very different scene unfolds. Toddlers in feathers and orange bikinis sway to Polynesian dances; 500 Pacific islanders eat clams and rush to shower the children with dollar bills. For this is a fund-raiser for the First Samoan Congregational Christian Church in Anchorage, Alaska.

The state's single congressman, Don Young, a Republican, once flourished a walrus penis-bone at the federal Fish and Wildlife Service director at a congressional hearing. But Alaska is changing. The Samoan compere says 93 languages are spoken in the Anchorage school system. Half a continent away, the state's oil-rich Arctic north counts 54 different ethnic groups, from Filipinos to Inupiat Eskimos.

The state Senate race is no less unexpected. The Democratic challenger, Tony Knowles, supports John Kerry in a state where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by almost two to one and which George Bush (Mr Knowles's room-mate at Yale) will probably win by about 30 points. Alaska has not sent a Democrat to Washington for a generation, and Mr Knowles has never won a head-to-head fight with a Republican.

Yet things are not what they seem. Alaska is a conservative, but not necessarily a Republican, state. More than half of its voters are registered independents. Mr Knowles was a respected two-term governor and mayor of Anchorage, where almost half the voters live. He is probably better known and liked than the Republican incumbent, Lisa Murkowski.

Ms Murkowski got her job because she was appointed to it by her father, Frank, who served as senator for 22 years before resigning to win the governorship. The state has not quite forgiven her, and as a result Ms Murkowski is the only incumbent Republican senator in serious danger of losing her job. Mr Knowles has been ahead in ten out of 11 polls, has drawn level with Ms Murkowski financially and has a superior get-out-the-vote operation. There are allegedly 441,617 undecided voters in Alaska, and the Democrats have contacted every one of them at least once.

Is it possible to be an independent-minded senator any more?

In some ways, argues Jerry McBeath of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the race may not matter all that much to the state. The candidates take broadly similar positions on the most important state issues, such as whether to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) to oil exploration (both are for it, along with everyone else in Alaska). But the contest is important to control of the Senate in Washington, DC. And it casts light on the nature of American politics more generally, for it raises the question: is it possible to be an independent-minded senator any more?

If it is possible anywhere, it should be in Alaska. Washington, DC, is 3,000 miles away. The state is a world of its own, unimaginably vast and, like other western states, it has a prickly relationship with a federal government that owns two-thirds of its land. Yet it depends critically on federal tax dollars, of which it is the largest per-head recipient, because, as in Siberia, few people would live in a frozen wilderness without big government subsidies.

This year is also the right time to test whether Alaskans want an independent senator. Amazingly, the state sent the same three Republicans to Washington for 22 years until 2002. Ted Stevens, the senior senator and the central, presiding figure in Alaskan politics, is not up for election this year, and Congressman Young will win by a mile. But Mr Knowles, if he wins, would change the character of the delegation.

At a debate in Fairbanks this week, Mr Knowles argued that “I'll be an independent, not a follower.” He supports drilling in the ANWR, which Mr Kerry opposes. As governor, he says, he worked with Republicans and now argues that he could craft a bipartisan national energy policy which 22 years of all-Republican representation has failed to achieve. “The one-party strategy has failed,” Mr Knowles insisted. “I'll caucus with everybody, I like them all.”

In contrast, the Republican campaign is a disquisition on how a united delegation has brought home the bacon for the state. Mr Stevens has been chairman of the appropriations committee since 1997. In that time federal funding for Alaska has risen by two-thirds to just over $12,000 a head. Mr Young uses an analogy from traditional Alaska to argue that a unified delegation is needed. “Uncle Ted”, he says, is the lead dog. Mr Young is the wheel dog at the back who provides the pulling power. Ms Murkowski is the swing dog, the one in the middle who keeps the team together. Pulling together, the Alaska delegation managed to force through a new $20 billion natural-gas pipeline after a 20-year wait. “If you caucus with the Democrats”, Ms Murkowski warned her rival at the Fairbanks debate, “you get nothing done.”

Is she right? Independents are an endangered species in the Senate. John Breaux, the Democratic senator from Louisiana is retiring. Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee, a Republican, is not loved by his party. Georgia's Zell Miller, a Democrat who addressed the Republican convention, has been rejected by both sides. Jim Jeffords, who was elected as a Republican, caucuses with the Democrats.

Yet Mr Knowles is one of several Democrats running in southern and western states to the right of Mr Kerry. The Alaska Senate race presents a stark choice between independence and party discipline. The result could influence not just the control, but the character of the Senate.